A percussion revival is underway at the St. Louis Symphony. This season's offerings culminate with a Percussion Festival and a performance of James MacMillan's Veni, Veni, Emmanuel next month.

During rehearsals for the opening-weekend program, a set of large brake drums had been placed
backstage at Powell Symphony Hall amidst the assortment of percussion instruments to be taken
on- and offstage as each piece required.

"You know," Kasica tells a backstage visitor, "the very best ones ever
made came off a 1955 Cadillac."

Kasica had set the bait. "Really?" the visitor responds.

"Oh yes," the percussionist replies earnestly. "Now here we have an
old Corvair…."

The fact that David Robertson's inaugural weekend as music director
of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra would include such a wide and exotic assortment of percussion
instruments (the brake drums accompanied soprano Dawn Upshaw in Claude Vivier's Lonely Child)
is a sign that the beat is back at Powell.

Moreover, for some programs, Robertson has called for the percussion
section to take a prominent position upstage center, moving from the back corner of the stage area.
Last December, Silvestre Revueltas's immensely crowd-pleasing work La noche de los Mayas
was a percussive extravaganza, with 13 musicians beating on a variety of instruments in a rousing
finale. On Wednesday, May 10, the first season of the SLSO Fusion Series concludes at the Touhill
Performing Arts Center with a Percussion Festival, featuring the SLSO percussionists, percussion
students from the Juilliard School, and percussion virtuoso Colin Currie. Currie joins the full
Orchestra for the season finale (May 12, 13, and 14), performing James MacMillan's Veni, Veni,
Emmanuel, a work that requires, says Kasica, "30 percussion instruments onstage."

A percussion revival at the SLSO is evident. Assistant Principal Timpani
Thomas Stubbs offers his perspective on the evolution of the SLSO percussion section under three
music directors. "Leonard Slatkin loved to do Prokofiev and Copland, which has percussion writing
that is more traditional, but there's a lot of it. Our musical identity as a section was made by the
way Leonard conducted Joseph Schwantner, Prokofiev, and Copland.

"With Hans Vonk," he continues, "percussion was in the background,
more intellectual. But I learned a lot from Hans. He filled in some of the blanks in terms of the details
in the core repertoire. With David we've come full circle. Leonard loved percussion. David loves
percussion. The job is ratcheted up with David here. My colleagues in other orchestras are jealous."

Stubbs, Kasica, and Principal Timpani Richard Holmes all came out of
the same class at Juilliard in the late 1960s and early 1970s. "We all went to the New York Philharmonic
every week and we were able to develop with Leonard," Stubbs observes. "There's something to be
said for continuity."

"Leonard would do these grandiose pieces by William Bolcom," Kasica
recalls. "A work such as "Final Alice" by David Del Tredici involved a massive percussion section.
I played percussion concertos by Schwantner, Minoru Miki's marimba concerto, and Ney Rosauro's
marimba and vibraphone concertos."

Schwantner had a particularly close relationship with Slatkin and
with the SLSO percussionists. Holmes says of the composer, "He knows exactly what the timpani can
do. He knows its limitations. As a composer you don't want to write something that is so far-fetched
that you can't get it played. Of all the composers for percussion, Schwantner has the greatest knowledge
of its use."

Holmes finds a link between the current percussion explosion and the
previous through the relationships between composers and conductors. John Adams, whose Harmonielehre
opened the 2005-06 season, is of the latest generation of composers to make full use of percussive
elements in his music. "From my knowledge of what he has written," says Holmes, "John goes for texture
and effect in regards to my instrument. I'm beginning to appreciate John Adams's music. I have the
feeling that David [Robertson] is really involved in Adams, as I found Leonard was with Schwantner."

Stubbs describes more connections between the previous SLSO percussion
era with Slatkin and the current one with Robertson. For example, in the upcoming Percussion Festival,
"We're going to play 'Ionisation,' one of the masterpieces for percussion by Varèse. We're
going to do a Christopher Rouse piece. Both of these works we did with Leonard. We're coming full
circle in this particular concert.

"The Juilliard kids are coming to join us, as well. It really is a special,
unique synthesis of everybody joining hands over the years," Stubbs concludes.

In popular culture, the most recognizable percussive moments occur
in the thunderous timpani effects found in Richard Strauss's "Thus Spake Zarathustra," as employed
by director Stanley Kubrick in his groundbreaking film 2001: A Space Odyssey; or in the
drum circles frequented by consciousness-raising groups in the 1970s and 1980s; or Grateful Dead
drummer Mickey Hart's popularization of world music in his Planet Drum tours.

In orchestral composition, Kasica explains, "From the 1930s through
the 1960s, ethnic and cultural instruments became part of classical composition‹the virtuosity
of different cultures came into play. The percussionist's role contributed to more of the general
sound-making."

And today? "We're in an experimental era," says Holmes.

Percussion still provides much for musicians and composers to explore,
and SLSO percussionsts and audiences are going to be part of that exploration.

Eddie Silva is the publications manager of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.